Falling and running.

I fell down the stairs last night. I’ve been falling down stairs my whole life, and I’m pretty good at it by now, so the only actual injury was the toes of my left foot. I wasn’t able to get them pointed up so I could stop myself against the wall at the bottom with the sole of my foot, and jammed the toes straight into the wall with my whole body weight sliding behind them.

If you’re curious, that really hurts a lot.

So as I sit here drinking tea and nursing my possibly broken toes, I reflect on the importance of shoes that fit well. See, it was my awkward-fitting slippers that both caused the fall and kept me from getting my toes out of harm’s way. I’m not strictly certain about that last part, to be honest. It happened very fast, but since I’m noticeably more clumsy in everything else I do when I wear them, I’m blaming the shoes for that, too. I won’t be wearing those anymore, at least not on stairs.

But shoes have been on my mind for other reasons the last few days, because Saturday night I bought Zombies, Run! for my phone. I wrote about this game when I first discovered it, and I went ahead and bought it when I saw it for half-price in the Google Play store. And it’s awesome.

I’ve only played two missions so far, and thanks to last night’s fall it’ll probably be a while before I do any more, but I already like it. The game doesn’t actually care how fast you’re moving, which is important if you’ve just spent a breathtakingly hot summer hiding from the Sun and moving as little as possible. I’m also not really equipped for running, so I took it at a brisk walk. Until Sam warned me about zombies coming up behind me, then I broke into a run. Turns out a well-acted warning in tones of “I’m trying very hard to sound calm so you don’t panic” can really motivate you, even when you know it’s just pretend.

The voice acting really is good, and a large part of it plays out more like an audio drama than a game. More than once a character would be describing my surroundings and I’d catch myself looking around to try to see what they were talking about. I really liked “Radio mode”, which starts automagically after you complete a mission and plays your music with interludes from the “disc jockeys” of the post-apocalyptic radio station. Since the only substantial playlist I have is my Halloween mix, the station comes off a little dark from my perspective.

The raw spot on my right heel tells me that I wore the wrong shoes for that game. Ah well, maybe I can pick up a pair of cheap running shoes. In the meantime, I’m going to try to be useful without walking very much, and hopefully my toes will heal up soon. No use thinking about running when I can barely walk.

I still have a pair. The soles are worn down, and the leather is split and torn in so many places that you can tell at a glance what color socks I’m wearing. They’re really no longer useful shoes, and I should throw them away and save up for new ones. But I’m not quite ready to let go, yet.